


Fires in the Garden of Eden

by SimplexityJane



Series: In the Beginning [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 22:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1619603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimplexityJane/pseuds/SimplexityJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After S.H.I.E.L.D. goes down in flames, someone has to rise from the ashes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fires in the Garden of Eden

Sometimes no matter what you do, a shield isn’t enough protection.

Pepper guesses this is why she has fire in her hands instead of vibranium. If someone needs a _shield_ , they can go to Steve.

* * *

 

“Director Coulson,” Pepper says a week after her clearance level comes through. She’s known Phil was alive for six days, Extremis in her blood, keeping her functional even after eighty hours awake as she devoured all the information she could on her new kingdom (that’s what it feels like, like she’s taking control of some war-torn kingdom and saying _this, this is where I stand, follow me_ ). She hasn’t contacted him.

“Director Potts,” Phil says, sitting in the chair across from her. His hands tremble minutely, and Pepper listens—his heartbeat shifts, faster and faster, then slower, like he’s having a panic attack. “Are they calling what you’re doing S.H.I.E.L.D?” And that’s betrayal, something Pepper knows intimately, learned when Killian injected her with a virus and called her a _prize_.

She’s known for one week that this confrontation is coming, so she knows what she’s going to say.

“No,” she says, and _that_ shocks Phil into quiet, into stillness. “I would suggest you call your organization something else too, Coulson. Right now I don’t have a name. If you find one, you should call and tell me, just in case I want to call my organization something similar.”

There’s fire in her veins, and she’ll never forget that. Something’s wrong with Phil, and he was _dead_ , but he wants her to lie down and roll over like a pet while _he_ takes over, and it’s the same sort of casual entitlement that allowed Fury to assume he had any power left after he brought S.H.I.E.L.D. to the ground. Everything Pepper has, she worked for, every scrap of trust and power—no one gave it to her. She isn’t an Avenger, she isn’t _Coulson_ , but she holds all the cards here.

“Are we going to be able to work together?” Coulson asks. Pepper almost smiles, but she stops herself. Coulson isn’t made for this.

“I think we have very different ideas of what protection means,” she says. Everyone knows that Pepper Potts and Tony Stark are freaks, that his suits are part of his skin and she killed a man with fire she created. No one, not even Fury, knows what confidences _that_ bought, how big their world _really_ is.

They’re part of a larger universe, Tony says sometimes, mocking Nick Fury’s voice. They have to protect it.

“I hope you change your mind.”

* * *

 

Pepper quietly donates half a million dollars to the Xavier-Lehnsherr Foundation and lobbies furiously against the Meta Identification Act. It gets struck down by a vast majority, and Erik invites her over for dinner.

Phil finds and neutralizes ten 0-8-4s, three of which mysteriously _vanish_.

Charles gets three new students in the fall, welcoming them in even though they aren’t, strictly speaking, mutants.

* * *

Tony has nightmares, and so does Pepper. His, however, bleed into his waking life, especially after the information dump that S.H.I.E.L.D. gave them.

“You can’t control everything, Tony, no matter how much you want to,” Pepper says, cradling his head. Maybe Extremis was a mistake, but he’s _warm_.

“I can, though, if I have all the variables,” he mumbles, caught in the data. Pepper sighs, stroking his hair, and she repeats what she’s said a hundred times before.

“I love you, Tony, and if anyone tries anything, I’ll kill them or I’ll send agents to kill them.”

“They did that to my parents,” he whispers. “Cut their break lines and waited. What’s to stop them from doing that again?”

Pepper laughs, filled with bitterness. She’s read the Stark file, knows who was on that mission—some Level 3 _kid_ who’s dead now, throat slit after he did his job—but she’ll never feel it like Tony does, even though he hated Howard, even though he never talks about Maria.

“We’re harder to kill.”

* * *

 

They don’t have a name yet, but for some reason her agents are calling themselves SID. She asks Darcy Lewis, who manages everything clearance Level 4 and below with an iron fist and a modified taser, and she laughs.

“Swords in the dark,” she snorts. “Don’t ask me why, I’m just Bosslady to them. Thor might know.”

Pepper doesn’t ask Thor. She talks to the new World Security Council, lets them know what their name is now. She argues for three hours over meta-registration and comes away the victor. She calls Erik, and they have drinks and talk about what will happen when things come to a head.

Coulson’s people start an interplanetary incident with aliens and Pepper’s people get called in to ensure peaceful relations while scientists on either side gut the technology they’re given. Phil looks better at least.

Asgard has a treaty in place that they will stand with Earth against other invasions. A second one, bathed in magic, promises support to metas if they go to war with humans.

Pepper signs this one with only Erik and Charles as witnesses, and she drinks enough alcohol to destroy a human liver afterwards.

* * *

 

Natasha’s in her room.

“Are you here to kill me, because I’m really _not_ in the mood,” Pepper says, toeing off her shoes. Her feet have been killing her despite all her enhancements, and it’s her _house_. Natasha can deal with bare feet, especially if she’s here to be inconvenient.

“I hear you’re the person to see if you want a job in the meta-human community,” Natasha says. She stands up, offering a dossier. “My resume.”

Pepper hefts the thin file in the air.

“Most of it’s online, huh?” she asks, and Natasha grins, ducking her head. Her hair’s shorter now, cut close to her ears, and there are bits of blonde in it. She looks good, Pepper decides. Different, but maybe that’s what she needed after everything. “What job are you applying for, Ms. Romanoff?” When Natasha glances at her she shrugs. “Might as well have the interview now, if you’re not going to kill me. I have too much to do during the day.”

“I noticed that Maria Hill acts as liaison between SID and S.H.I.E.L.D. I assumed at first that she handled everything above Level 5, but then I realized you, Tony, and Dr. Banner were handling that. I would like to offer my services there.”

“The President gave you Level 10 clearance?” Pepper asks, opening the file. That’s there, as surprising as it is. “I actually promoted Darcy to Level 5 just recently. Would you be okay with organizing, managing, and supervising Level 6 and above instead?”

Natasha grins, honest and open, and she nods.

“You’re sure you don’t want me as a field agent?” she asks. “My skills are pretty well known.”

“So is your face,” Pepper says. She holds up a hand to stop Natasha’s token protest. “Besides, I don’t usually offer jobs when people don’t apply for them. We’ll draw up a contract tomorrow and you can go through some orientation with the Level 6 and aboves. I think you’re going to hate Pym, but everyone hates him.”

Natasha stays for wine after that, but she leaves before Tony finishes in the lab. She must have known that he was connected to all the cameras in the house, though. She _is_ the best at what she did.

* * *

“It’s a stopgap,” Phil says when he talks about how his memories have been altered by technology twice. “Eventually I’ll go insane and die.” There are papers in front of her that would make S.H.I.E.L.D. part of SID, would make it _hers_.

Pepper smiles, dialing Charles’s number.

“I have something better than a stopgap.”

Phil goes away knowing that he died and that they brought him back, but not how, those memories locked away forever. A woman named _Skye_ of all things hugs Pepper within an inch of her life, which is not an easy thing to do, and two scientists tackle her after that. Pepper retains her composure, barely.

* * *

 

It goes together, a sword and a shield. Both of them have to light the way, and Pepper has enough fire to light up the world, if she has to.

**Author's Note:**

> I just want Pepper as Director. In this story, mutants are a secret, and Charles uses Cerebro to help make sure they stay that way while Erik talks very passionately about concentration camps and the human capacity for hate.


End file.
